Lesson 12: Silence and Psalmody

The starting point for singing the psalms is silence--at least, if we want to experience them as

, not just as piety.

John of the Cross, that wonderful 16th-century mystic, once said, "Silence is God's first language." The way we learn to speak the language of the psalms is to learn to speak the language of silence.

"Silence is God's first language." --St. John of the Cross

Today there are many simple methods of contemplative, or what some people call, stilling prayer available to Christians on the spiritual journey. Like spokes of a wheel--

, Christian meditation, Christian vipassana--all lead to the hub, which is interior silence. Silence is really the starting place for the understanding of the Christian path. It is the matrix out of which the Word comes--and to which it ultimately returns.

So I would encourage each of you to begin your journey into the rich wisdom of the Christian tradition by adopting a practice of contemplative prayer. Once that's established, psalmody will have a natural and beautiful place from which to flow.

You can lead yourself into your contemplative prayer or lead yourself out of it with a couple of chanted psalms. Perhaps you might start by chanting that classic versicle from

"Oh God, come to my assistance; oh Lord, make haste to help me," with which all monastic offices begin.

Then you might sing one or two of the

.

Like incense

let my prayer rise before you, Oh God,

the lifting of my hands

like an ev'ning oblation.

Come, let us sing for joy in Christ our God;

Let us praise him with all creation!

Like incense

let my prayer rise before you, O God,

the lifting of my hands

like a ev'ning oblation.

Or you can simply pick up your Grail Psalms, your Book of Common Prayer, or your Bible and chant a few in the way we worked in the article of "

."

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